


In Better Times

by arthurmorgan-s-heart (Silverblind)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 00:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19120921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverblind/pseuds/arthurmorgan-s-heart
Summary: Sadie and Arthur return to the place where it all began.





	In Better Times

**Author's Note:**

> This is a request fill from my tumblr blog. Uploaded here for convenience - find me on tumblr - arthurmorgan-s-heart
> 
> Original request text: "Sadie asking Arthur to go back to her house with her. Maybe to see if ANYTHING can be salvaged. No romance, just friendship and empathy for the tragedy each has lived through."

Sadie’s eyes are hard; they always had been, for as long as Arthur had known her. She had built a thick layer of stone around herself that protected her from the world - and from her own heart, he suspects. Her own memories of a better time, of a better man.

He can see it now, as they bring their horses to a halt on the ridge overlooking the small valley where she’d been living mere months ago - she becomes harder, and leaves herself behind. Lord knows he’d done it enough times himself to recognize it.

“You sure you wanna do this?” he asks, pulling his coat tighter around himself - although the rest of the world had moved on into spring many weeks ago, the grizzlies seem stubbornly stuck in winter. Thick snow still covered the ground, and the wet, piercing cold freezes him to the bone - something he truly dislikes. But Sadie had asked -  _pleaded_ , or as close to it as someone like Sadie could manage - him to come, and so he had.

She doesn’t look at him, her eyes trained on the blackened remains of what had once been her home - it was little more than a grey stain on the immaculate white of the snowy landscape at this distance.

“I gotta, Arthur,” she says. “I need to.”

He nods, even though she can’t see him. He knows that need all too well.

“Alright.”

She takes the lead, and he lets her; this is her time. The ride down the gentle slope leading to the house almost seems to take hours, so slow is their pace; but he rides in silence, waiting patiently. He has no right to decide anything, no right to hurry her. Not here. Not now.

She brings her horse to a halt in front of the house, almost exactly where the cart in which her husband’s body had been thrown had been. Arthur stops a few paces behind her, waiting; she’s still for a long time, watching as the wind blows fine snow over the ruins of her life. There’s a few inches of snow on every flat surface in the ruined home, ready to take it over at any moment. It’s a good thing they’d come now.

After a long while, she slowly climbs off her horse, giving it a soft pat on the shoulder before carefully picking her way through the charred debris to go stand in the middle of what, Arthur remembers, had been the dining room. He can almost imagine her then, sitting there with her husband, eating, talking, laughing - she must have still laughed, back then, unlike now - , unaware of the O’driscolls lurking just outside her door, unaware of just how close she was to losing everything she knew and loved.

“Arthur.”

Her voice pulls him from his thoughts, and he climbs off his horse to go stand next to her. Her eyes are shiny with tears, and yet she still stands tall, firm, unshaken.

“Help me look.”

She doesn’t say anything more, but she doesn’t need to; he knows what she’s looking for.

 _Something_.

 _ **Anything**_.

They search in silence, starting on opposite sides of the house; she starts in what had once been the kitchen, and he takes the bedroom. He sifts through ash, pieces of charred wood, and shards of glass, searching for anything that might be left from her old life.

He finds it when he nears the fireplace; it’s blackened and tarnished and almost broken in two, but he recognises it immediately - he’d held it in his hands for a moment, long ago. Before all this.

He stands and turns to her, watching her for a moment as she brushes snow off of a broken chair as delicately as if it’d been made of thin glass. She tenses when she hears him take a step toward her, but he sees he relax when she turns to face him, as if remembering where she was, and who she was with.

“Here,” he says when he reaches her, holding out his find for her to take. She stares at it for a moment, frowning as if trying to remember what it could be - what it once had been. He can’t blame her; what it had once held was gone, wood and paper burned away in the inferno that had consumed her home and her life and everything that she had once been.

Suddenly she heaves what almost seems to be a sob, and reaches forward with shaking hands, taking it from him with a gentleness he never would have guessed she was capable of - he looks at her as she turns it in her hands, as if examining a rare treasure, rubbing at the blackened metal with her thumbs as if trying to clean it, though heat had made the marring permanent.

“Where is it?” she asks after a while, looking up at him. Her eyes are still hard, still strong, though she can’t quite hide the slight tremor of her voice. “Did you find it?”

He opens his mouth to answer, but feels the words catch in his throat. He could shake his head, avoid the trouble - but he knows she needs to hear the words.

“It’s gone, Sadie,” he whispers, and just like that, the stone wall she had held up for so long cracks and shatters, and she falls to her knees, clutching the frame that had once held her wedding photograph to her chest as tears roll down her cheeks. He looks away, unsure, feeling as if he’s somewhere he doesn’t belong, though his eyes are drawn back to her when he hears her smother a sob - and suddenly he sees himself, sitting on the floor of the house where Eliza had raised their son, turning one of Isaac’s toys in his hands for hours upon hours, as if that would bring them back, grieving and alone, so very alone.

He steps closer, and he kneels down next to her; he’d been alone then, but he’d be damned if he let her go through the same ordeal. She’s too lost in her grief to pay him much mind, until he touches her shoulder; her head snaps up, and she almost looks like a wild animal, the way she curls up around her treasure, as if he was sure to destroy it with merely a look. But he sits next to her, putting his hand back in his lap, ignoring the snow soaking his pants, waiting - until, slowly, little by little, she comes to sit with her shoulder against his, her sobs drained into hiccups and her tears seemingly run dry.

“Why can’t I let go, Arthur?” she asks, after what seems like hours of silence.

“Been askin’ myself the same question for years,” he answers quietly. He thinks about Mary then, and Eliza, and Isaac. He had never let go of them, and they’d never let go of him. “Don’t think I’ll ever be able to. Maybe I just can’t.”

“Maybe I just can’t,” she repeats, and rests her head on his shoulder.

They watch the trees sway in the wind for a long while, until he feels her grab his hand, squeezing tight.

“I’ll kill them, Arthur,” she whispers, so low that he can barely hear her, even though she’s so close to him. “All of ‘em.”

He squeezes back, and stands up, helping her to her feet. He keeps one hand on her shoulder, and meets her eyes.

“I know.”


End file.
